


A Constellation of Unsaid Things

by writinqbyliv



Series: Constellations [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Broken Draco Malfoy, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Time Turner (Harry Potter), dad draco / sad draco, they all deserve the world, uncle theo just wants to help everyone
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:56:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29970834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writinqbyliv/pseuds/writinqbyliv
Summary: A heartbroken and grieving Draco Malfoy travels back to the past to spend moments with his late wife in a time before she fell in love with him.
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Series: Constellations [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2204400
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	A Constellation of Unsaid Things

The first time Draco went back was like breathing. Feeling her palm across his cheek—the sting burning beneath his skin. But all he saw were her eyes and all he felt was her touch. Soft and gentle in his memory—as if she was loving him even when he knew, deep down, that she wasn't.

She was warm. Warmer than he had remembered. It had been a lifetime since he last felt the blood in her veins, the softness of her skin, that familiar feeling in his chest just by seeing her face. The anger that he could see rippling through her, the passion simmering on her surface, he had missed just as much.

She raised her hand again, preparing to strike his now blemished skin. He wished she had made the connection of hand and face that second time. He wished he could feel the graze of her fingers all over again. No matter how harsh. Maybe then the mark would have stayed—a tattoo engraved in red ink forever—something to hold on to. But he was dragged away too soon, his feet scampering into the distance, carrying him away from her just as they had the first time.

He threw his head over his shoulder as he ran, his eyes locked on that mess of brunette hair. It bounced slightly as she laughed with her friends, so familiar to him that he didn’t have to hear the sound escaping her lips—one more thing amongst the many that he missed. His breathing became ragged and strangled the further from her he became as if he had left his only source of oxygen behind. Along with his bruised and broken heart.

The shelter of the crooked bridge was a sanctuary. Somewhere to regain just an ounce of control before he burst. His hands shook as he ran his fingers through his hair and down the plains of his face—the mark on his cheek tingled as he passed over it with his own palm, resting on the imprint. It was as close as he could get to holding her hand in his own. He could almost feel the ghost of her fingers intertwining with his as he held her handprint firmly to his skin—afraid that it would disappear far too soon, just as she had.

The tears that escaped his eyes were hot with pain, trickling down his flushed flesh and dripping onto the wooden boards beneath his feet, the splashes echoing in his ears as he tried to focus his mind. A sob broke through his throat as he slumped against the bridge wall, slipping down until he hit the hard ground that had been stained in his affliction.

He felt constricted. The walls of the rickety bridge closing in around him as the air escaped his lungs. He gasped between the sobs, his eyes screwed tightly shut as the flood threatened to break free. Shards of glass pierced through his throat as he gulped for something, anything, to keep him from falling into unconsciousness.

She was all he could see behind his eyes. The everlasting pile of books clutched in her arms. The frizz of her wild hair tossed into a haphazard bun atop her head. The twinkle in her chocolate eyes that could read him like an open book. The curve of her pink lips that he would kiss until he fell asleep. The freckles that spattered her cheeks like the stars in the night sky, his own fingers tracing them as if drawing his very own constellation. It was just Granger—his Granger— surrounded by her most perfect imperfections, front and centre in his crumbling mind.

Occlumency failed him when he thought of her. But he was always thinking of her. She was the part of himself that he could never let go of and could never hide away in the deepest corners of his mind, never to be looked upon again. She swam on the surface as his other memories drowned in her presence. His mind was undone and his heart was bursting with unwanted agony.

The chain around his neck ticked as the sand ran empty, his stolen time slipping through his fingers. The dial spun in a whirlwind as he clutched the edges firmly in his grasp—his world shifting beneath his feet. And suddenly, he was no longer thirteen. The walls of his living room dragged another sob from his strained throat, her belongings scattering the room—each with their own blanket of dust—right where she left them, right where they had been that morning and the morning two years before. He was twenty-eight again, curled into himself in the middle of a room that was the exact essence of who she was. 

Her face was everywhere. Plastered on the green painted walls—the walls she had insisted on—were photos of her with her friends, with her family, with him. The extensive bookcase along the western wall still remained untouched, the books organised in a way only she could have understood. Blush flowers wilted in the corner by the window—English roses delivered by Pansy—the Gentle Hermione. It was the window where she would spend hours reading in the morning sun, losing track of the day until it was suddenly nightfall. Her favourite quill sat atop her notebook on the coffee table, pieces of scrawled upon parchment sticking out from between its pages.

“Daddy?” A small voice whispered as he wept.

He turned his head from where he sat on the floor to see a small girl peering at him from the doorway. Her blonde hair was a mess of curls—her round eyes, pools of chocolate.

“Did you see mummy?” She asked softly, her sock-covered feet stepping into the room, her arms clutched around a worn-out green dragon.

An idyllic laugh echoed through his ears—Granger’s laugh—full of humour and teasing when she had bought the wretched thing for the little girl that now stood in front of him. He hated the poor thing, he said so the day she came home with it, but he loved it all the same. Because she was the one who had carried it through the door and into the house—the house that was theirs.

His mouth lifted into a small smile, one that didn’t meet his eyes, he was beyond trying. “I did, love.”

“How was she?” The girl asked, her voice shy as her hands fiddled with the wings of her stuffed dragon. She had been five years old for just under two months now and even with the nervousness laced through her words, Draco had noticed her becoming even more like her mother with every passing day.

He took a deep breath before he spoke, his whole body calming ever so slightly as he looked at his daughter. “As beautiful as ever.”

The little girl walked closer, plonking herself onto his lap—he still had yet to move from the rug-covered floor. She looked into his eyes and placed a small warm palm onto the same cheek her mother’s hand had collided with moments ago—as if she knew. He covered the tiny hand with his own. Hand on hand on handprint.

Tears leaked from his eyes and cascaded down his already stained cheeks. Arms wrapped themselves around his neck and he pulled the small body of his child close to his chest—wild blonde curls attacking his face as she buried her eyes into his shoulder. They cried together for what felt like hours—just the pair of them and a dragon on the living room floor—until she fell asleep, enveloped in his arms.

He lifted her up, grip still around his neck with the dragon clasped between her fingers. She snuggled further into him, tightening her hold as he carried her out of the living room that was painted in all things Granger, and into a hallway that was much the same. The smiling face of his wife followed him up the stairs and past the closed bedroom door that had once been theirs, chasing him into the confines of a room that belonged to his daughter. But still, she was also Granger’s daughter, and the ghost of her lingered amongst the pastel blue walls and the children’s books across the floor.

An orange feline roused from his sleep on the navy quilt as the bedding was pulled back for the little girl to slip inside and drift into her dreamland. He was Draco’s cat now. In Draco’s house, in Draco’s daughter’s room. It was all Draco’s, nothing hers. Not anymore. Not like it used to be.

He settled himself into the chair in the corner where he had slept most nights for the two years she had been gone. His back was sore, his neck stiff, but still he suffered through it, unable to face sleeping in a room that she used to sleep in. A room she would never sleep in again. The cat curled into his lap like he always did, the pair of them watching over his daughter as exhaustion took over, tears still running down his face.

Tracing her starlike freckles in his mind, he followed the lines and connected the dots in a pattern that only her sunkissed skin could make. He wished he had spoken something to her when he went back. Told her that he loved her just one more time. He counted her spots—like he used to do—each one adding another memory of her to the collection of things that had been left unspoken. That he wanted to hold her, to kiss her, to just have her back. He painted a constellation across her cheeks—soft and beautiful and lovely and full of all those unsaid things.


End file.
